Catbird

Catbird occupies the upper floors of the Thompson Dallas, in the old National tower on Elm Street, and trades on the view as much as the drinks. Its non-alcoholic offering is printed as its own section — Non-Alcoholic Cocktails — on a menu refreshed in July 2026, which is worth noting in a city where zero-proof lists have a habit of appearing each January and quietly vanishing by March. A rooftop bar is also one of the harder rooms to enjoy without alcohol, because the whole format is built around lingering over a drink, so a real list here does more work than the same list would in a restaurant.

The three builds are genuinely constructed drinks. Barbie Girl uses Lyre's London Dry with rhubarb syrup and floats matcha concentrate on top, giving it both bitterness and a visual identity — it does not arrive looking like a soft drink. Canned Responses works lychee, coconut and almond into something closer to a tiki drink. Shoots & Ladders is the most interesting technically, built on a house-fermented pineapple bamboo tepache, a Mexican fermented-fruit drink whose funk and acidity does the work alcohol usually does; it is the one to order if you miss complexity rather than sweetness. Heineken 0.0 backs them up on the beer list.

The detail that lifts this entry is reciprocity: the section runs in both directions, and any of the three can be made spirited for a small supplement. That means a table does not have to split its order between a cocktail menu and a mocktail menu — everyone orders the same drink and specifies. A note for anyone arriving from press coverage: articles have credited Catbird with drinks called Bullet Train, Beach Ritual and Faded Ember, built on Pathfinder, Seedlip and Leitz. Those came from a Death & Co. residency rather than the house menu and are not currently served. The three above are what the bar actually pours. One practical note on timing. A rooftop is a view bar first, so the value of the room changes with the light — arrive before sunset and the drink is incidental to what you came for; arrive late and it is the drink doing the work, which is when a real non-alcoholic list earns its place.